This thread is for player suggestions regarding pillaging variety, as mentioned in the blog post here. What we're most interested in is your feelings on the status quo and whether you can identify any particular areas of pillaging that might benefit from some new excitement or dynamic elements.

As always, however, note that while we really appreciate your feedback in this area, we cannot promise the adoption of any particular suggestion in this thread, and this is not intended to be a 'vote' on what we implement next. The goal here is for us to get good comments collectively from you folks so we can better tackle any changes that we feel need to be made, not to have a hundred different people drown each other out with essays on how they feel pillaging should work. Collaborative, Constructive and Concise Feedback wins the day!

I find the most irritating thing on pillaging is just the sheer grind of sticking on one puzzle with very small breaks - elite pillages pay better, but when a battle is 20 + turns, and it takes 3 leagues or more to find battles sometimes, that's a lot of time stuck on *one* puzzle, since most of the time people don't want to switch.. What would be nice from both the perspective of someone who puzzles, and from the perspective of navvers, looking for better all-round pirates in all environments, was if there were a bonus for people switching off stations every so often.. maybe something as simple as a trophy, similar to the battered hat, or item rewards (these seem to be more favorable than poe), or even a ramp increase for everyone playing a musical chairs sort of situation.. That way, sure, you could stick on one station, but there would be a bonus for people switching to new stations.. Yes, to start with there might be an issue, in that many jobbers aren't all-round players, but that would slowly start to change, and be less of a grind, without the necessity to add new content, or new puzzles to pillaging.
----------------------------------------
Inanna, SageCaptain of Dulce et Decorum estNannatars

Spawning: More variety, higher frequency of spawns, with the greater proportion of them being Elective (You choose to attack). Having to pass up the 3rd red baghlah for your first battle on a sloop before getting anything smaller can be tedious for nav and jobbers alike, as can waiting 2-3 leagues for anything to appear.

Also, if a ship is spawning for you as a pillager, you want it to be at a speed and orientation where it is greater than 0% possible to catch it, not half a league ahead going full speed away from you.

OK, let's have some trophies for those who like that kind of thing - say for being present for 1, 10, 100, 1000 sea battle victories. Perhaps another sequence for 100, 500 and 2000 battles at the helm. Numbers are examples only.

A new pillaging mode which offers a bot gunner (1 to 2 shots/turn) for reduced payouts, without having to be in the navy - thus allowing those who aren't so hot at gun-nav to indulge in PvP and pillaging without "waiting on a gunner" in port.

Possibly a Performance pay scheme, which affects the first 50% split of the divvy post-battle, based on the duty report at the time of grappling. The 50% kept in the booty chest would be divided evenly.

More will come to mind eventually I'm sure, but that's for starters.
----------------------------------------
Whitewyvern. Distinctly Limey. Retired, No regrets. Unretired, still No regrets.Available in Cerulean and Obsidian flavours.

This treasure haul would be non-chest bearing (or it could and have those pillage-exclusive things in them, omo) and would appear randomly at the start of a sea battle.

would make pillaging interesting (haul or fight, if we haul the other ship might get us, if we fight and get grappled, the haul will be gone)
----------------------------------------
Every once in a blue moon, the moon turns blue.

Something similiar to the above idea - Rare items that can only be obtained via pillaging? A new sword/Bludgeon/Mug type?

I like this - a kind of chest exclusive to pillaging, just like the chests exclusive to Atlantis and exclusive to the Cursed Isles.
----------------------------------------
Orsino, Viridian oceanForum-mute: your best friend

Whitewyvern wrote:

The only high end goals are those you set for yourself. What happens to anyone else is irrelevant.

First off, thank you very much for putting some brainpower towards this aspect of the game. (Um, if this belongs better in one of the other threads, sorry!)

1) A reason to do something different: Right now, people feel that they 'own' their station on a pillage. A reason to trade stations, switch it up, do something different in between, to help break up the monotony.

2) Balance of station numbers: Sails outnumbers the other stations on the standard pillaging vessels. Many players (myself included) start out the game adoring sails, and get burned out on it from having to do it too often.

3) Length of battles: The booty ramp means that you can't really afford to take a loss and still have an excellent income for the pillage. This likely breaks down into a) reducing the impact of a loss on the total booty for the voyage, and b) having a better way for the nav to judge what bnav score is needed to assure a decent chance of a win. Right now, I can't tell if I need to max-0 that ship or if I can just first turn grapple them and still win. I would guess this is because the might ring is trying to do too much with a single indicator - the ship size, the number of fighters aboard, the rumble/melee skill of the bots aboard, and blood bots/merchants skill hike. So, more information about what I'm facing, and less risk of taking hits, would lead to speedier battles.

4) Spawn lag: It can take a lot of plain sailing out of battle before you generate an opponent that you would like to fight. Again, there are two components here: a) there seems to be some sort of problem with the spawn generation that can lead to you not seeing a single spawn for a prolonged period of time (one memorable 'pillage' had Rome job me on, immediately tell me spawning had been a problem so far, and us porting 45 minutes later without having a single battle), and b) the system generating opponents that you don't want to fight, because either it's brigands when you want barbarians, but more problematically, because the disparity in ship size firepower makes the battle unfun.

I do not believe that generating new items solely by pillaging will have the hoped-for effect - it gives you a reason to grind (halloween candy trophies) but it leaves the grind itself as the same old same old. I wouldn't poopoo new items, but I'd rather see the experience updated so it's something new.
----------------------------------------
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world. ~ Jack Layton

Less time between battles++. And what Pie said- all the suggestions sound good, but the problem with pillaging is the experience "in the moment". Goals are great, but they don't provide joy while you are busy on the water.

Back to the boredom of puzzling between battles. Battles are interesting, sailing back and forth is boring. If I job on a responsibly-run, low-end pillage, I would make better pay in the Navy. I wish distance from port would affect the pace of battles.

I also get bored on *any* station after an hour or so. I appreciate tokens, as if I can't swap stations (and I often veer away from interrupting the momentum by asking) I can at least swap my priorities back and forth. Some method of optionally integrating tokens to pillaging might help.

Integrating those two notions, mayhaps between-battle token generation could be used by the navigator to influence spawn. "Barbarian Tokens", and whatnot.
----------------------------------------Firestone, Captain, Mad Tea Party, CobaltGallant, PotD, Midnight

I wasn't sure if this should go here or go to the Booty Div, but it would be kinda cool to see TH/Forage integrated into a Pillage. Give a portion of the booty automatically, and then a portion from the appropriate puzzle. Brigands could be a TH, and Barbarians a Forage puzzle. A Chest/Crate would be gold, a Locker/Basket would be a commodity, random, and a Treasure Box/Chest would be an expensive commodity, maybe a KB, maybe Gems, maybe Sassafras, or even ALOT of commods, like 20 Wood, or 40 Bananas.

You would be allowed to Treasure Haul/Forage for a base amount of time (maybe 1 or 2 minutes) reduced by the percentage of damage you took. So if it takes 6 to max a sloop, and you were hit twice, you have 1/3 the time to forage/th.

This would allow some more variety in pillaging, since your doing a duty station, then a fighting puzzle, then a treasure puzzle. It would also allow newer jobbers to practice TH and forage, since TH is currently only in Atlantis and Flotillas.

I propose some mechanic where additional victory conditions are randomly imposed when pillaging. The more arbitrary and capricious, the better. Fulfilling conditions would be optional but would net the ship additional rewards.

Some of the examples off the top of my head:

- Win the fray with exactly one player left standing- RandompirateX must top his/her duty report- RandompirateY must survive the fray- Carpenters must get a combined total of X Masterpieces before the fray- Nobody score less than a "Fine" (for the greenies)- etc.

Basically, teamwork-oriented trophy-style goals for the crew to strive for (placing importance on different people for different battles to give all a "this is my time to shine" feel) on a single battle timescale.

After reading the suggestion about unrated duty stations, and the complaints about having to grind on one station for ages, I had an odd thought - what if there was a station that could change from carp to bilge to sails, whatever the OIC ordered. Keep the stars low, keep the puzzles unrated but contributing to the ship, and make the puzzle open to change whenever the stars are filled. Probably not feasible in terms of programming, but would be fun for a pirate who is decent at the puzzles, gets sick of them quickly, and wants to help the ship without booching their stats.
----------------------------------------

XXX greeter chats, "wat is this chat for than anyway"YYYY greeter chats, "idk its just that theres 1 rule and that we arnt alowd to chat in

I'd love it if you could also spawn ships -smaller- than yourself, so that the player might sometimes be on the other side of the sloop vs baghlah scenario. Of course, said baghlah would have to be weak enough that a high end imp sloop/cutter/dhow had an appropriate might ring, but that's okay; it might, if implemented the right way, even give encouragement to job less experienced mates. There's a whole set of battles that almost never happens (You can attack other players spawn, of course, but the ocean's a big place... I don't see this opportunity very often. )

If anything is done about station variety/rotation/whatever... people already have to sail at least twice as much as anything else needs doing... twice as much as -everything- else combined needs doing, actually. As someone who really doesn't care for sailing, the notion that I might need to spend more than half of every pillage sailing makes me quite wary about any incentives to rotate stations around. It's an interesting idea, I'd just like to see the sail balance addressed.

(This may be why I like longships more than most people, too. I'm perfectly content to have my crew equally divided among the three stations, and a longship is a lot less leaky that way than when you try to have the usual 2:1:1 sail/carp/bilge ratio. )
----------------------------------------
~< The Dread Pirate Chris >~
----------------------------------------
[Edit 1 times,
last edit by DreadedChris at Jan 31, 2009 1:57:09 AM]

I thought I might just throw this out there and see where it lands. It's not tremendously detailed and I have no idea of the programming ramifications of this suggestion. But here goes...

After a CI one night, some mates and I were talking about what made going to CI so compelling. Was it the items? The PoE? The need for elite-ish crew? What we decided on was that it was the sense of having a MISSION to go on that did it. Everyone gathered on the ship with one purpose. Get to the site, get to the island, fight & forage, get out and back to port and split the spoils.

Then we started considering regular pillages. These seem to lack that sense of purpose, that MISSION we feel with CI. You just get on a ship and fight random battles and get money (or lose it) and on and on and on. No real context other than "we're just sailing around."

What if a sense of MISSION could be added to standard pillages? And I suggest the following as an OPTION to players who would like to pick them up.

Why not offer adventure type missions to players for accomplishing specific tasks in the game? An optional mission that could be picked up and a "bounty" could be offered for successful completion of that mission.

Example: A wealthy noble on Dragon's Nest has an urgent message for a family member on Terra. He is willing to pay 10000 poe for it's safe delivery.

Example: A shady merchant on Lima knows of a hermit living on Kirin in possession of a treasure map to Erh island. Sail to Kirin to obtain the map and on to Erh to claim the chest containing poe and items rumored to be worth at least 15K

Missions could be treated as "gems" or other booty in the game and could be "stolen" or "Scuttled" in the course of a pillage giving incentive to the crew to work hard to keep the mission (and the associated bonus) in mind.

Obtaining missions could be done in a number of ways including talking to bots at inns or swabbies that board ships to start jobbing.

These missions could be random and set at a spawn rate of the designers choosing. They would not always be available at every port or the start of every pillage. But by keeping "bounties" reasonable, they could spawn more frequently that CI or Atlantis maps due to the lower return.

And of course players would be free to abandon these missions and forfeit the "bounty" if they choose to port early or simply not follow through.

From an esthetic stand point, designers could have some fun with this and develop characters for oceans...the cunning merchant who always has rumors or the network of noblemen always looking for willing messengers to carry out their sordid business.

Granted this is not a technical reply to your query. But it is the result of some spirited discussion among long time players looking for something to Spice Up their pillages in the same way that CI seems to have scored a hit with many of us.

I hope you will consider it.Thanks,Falbard
----------------------------------------
[Edit 1 times,
last edit by Falbard at Jan 31, 2009 4:04:59 AM]

Many, many yes to this idea.If you are on a long pillage, 7 orange/red battles or something and you are near a smh spot, then you could spawn a smh battle of that type. It will spawn in front of you, waiting to engage only you.

Atlantis Patrols:"In your voyage for gold and glory you have wandered far too near to a atlantis outpost. A bellator patrol has crossed your way and they don't look very friendly. You can lose your ship here, you have to do yer best to defend yourselves from this new danger. But bear in mind that the atlanteans are widely known for they wealth, and theis beasts always carry some gold with them."

One or two beasts at most should spawns. Scaled to the ship size, but of red might. Scout trike is enough for a sloop, really. You then have a choice. Evade and disengage (or run to a safe zone) when able or fight to a sinking end. Yours or theirs. If you won, you get to haul the stuff.If you sink, you sink. SMH should always be sinking. Maybe even some goon visitors should hop on to bring more fun.

Cursed Crusaders:"After some very good battles you noticed a strange island, coming out of a green fog. From behind it you see a couple of strangly designed ships. You see some madly grinned faces of cursed cultists on board. You almost hear their mumbling, that pierce into your mind bringing you to the edge of insanity. You must choose to run or fight them. You could lose yourself to their insane ways. And your ship as well. But you remember old stories about treasures of the Cursed Isles heard from an old sali in some god forsaken inn."

Spawn some Sloops, Cutters. And some rafts. If you sink them all, a little island with just one round of foraging pops up. The rest as above.

Problems:- SMH are sinking, pillages are not- To enter SMH you need a bravery badge/subscription- To play treasure haul or forage you don't need badge/subscription but to get chests, you need one- SMH are SMH, pillages are pillages

Possible solutions:- It should be a possibility of disengage for the first two or three turns, if you stay, you fight to death.- If you get to see what's in there, and you like it, you will buy bravery badge to get there again faster- Umm.... If you won a chest from the division, and you dont have the badge you get a message:"You were given a chest from the encounter. But you are too scared to open them. You should have a bravery badge to prove you are not a scaredy cat next time"- This is just a sugesstion to bring more fun to pillaging. Flame away if you dont like it.

If the SMH maps would be avaible only as a winning from that kind of encounters it will make SMH trips harder to come by. So less CI junk items flooding the economy. That's a big plus. And that's a chance to show CI to the non-elites. Maybe then they will train more to get jobbed for a trip. And they will surely buy a badge or subscription. Nothing motivates you more then "We would give you more stuff, but you must buy something first. If you do, you'll get more stuff next time."
----------------------------------------
Fair WindsBarbarosa of MalachiteMostly retired - burned out at the moment.

I think people are losing the plot here. We're supposed to be suggesting ways to improve pillaging, and both suggestions previous to this post seem to be aimed at a new feature, or an extension of other non-pillaging features.

I think the reasons for people not pillaging have been clearly outlined, and finding ways around them is the key to them making a return.

People get tired of doing 1 duty station. Pillages are currently 3 segments: Sailing to find a ship, battling the ship, and the fray. The first two are the longest, and involve shipboard puzzling. To a jobber, its a case of puzzle while we find a ship, puzzle while we battle the ship, a quick puzzle swap while we fight the fray, and then straight back to puzzling. Anyone is going to get bored of that after 3 hours.

The solution? Give people variety. Make the grapple engagements last longer, but increase the reward for winning. My suggestion is for a "Looting" puzzle to be introduced, quite possibly a side-scrolling TH/Forage type (to simulate the passing of gold and goods from one ship to another) where only players who survive the fray are allowed to play. This gives navvers an incentive to max - 0 the enemy, as that will give them the greatest chance of winning and having people alive. This feature should also work in reverse; the less bots that survive the fray, the less you lose, and the less it "kills" your ramp. This means that you won't be punished so heavily for the unlucky loss when 1 bot survives.

Another issue that people have with pillaging is the payouts. With Atlantis and CI, players receive Poe and the possibility of good items, especially the higher end crews who can TH many turtles or win 5+ frays in CI. With pillaging, players only receive poe, and the payouts tend to be less. I've not pillaged in around a year now, but I do remember not receiving 5k for an hours work, which is around what people are getting for a 5 fray CI run, plus the items.

In my opinion, each main shipboard feature (CI, SMH and Pillaging) should provide rewards differently. Pillaging has always been about the poe, and nothing else. When SMH came in, people lessened their pillaging due to the possibility of obtaining around the same amount of poe, PLUS items. Then CI was introduced, and again, you receive poe and items, meaning that an hours work gives more to the jobber then pillaging. Technically, these releases have reduced pillaging to being lower-end content, because the higher-end players know they can successfully earn more poe by doing other things.

The way I see it, is pillaging should be about straightforward poe, Atlantis about items (with some poe, of course) and CI the middleground, with a balance between the poe of pillaging and the items of Atlantis.
----------------------------------------
Penguinpaste, SO of Polaris, Obsidian. Dark side.

It would make more sense if they allowed you to sink ships during pillages where u could th if u sunk them or some kind of forage if u grapple.

Edit : Bounty hunts , new form of pillage where your goal is to sink ships(with the risk of sinking yourself of course), bounties could be automatically put on spawned ships the same way the game spawns brigands and barbarians.

It goes against most of what I find fun, but sometimes you make sacrifices for the greater good...

Make some new routes as "No PvP" zones. Impossible for players to engage each other, but with brigand spawns on these routes having a lower payout than open sea-lanes.

There are many people who do not enjoy the PvP aspect of the game but want to set sail, I'd be willing to give them a safe area to ply their trade, but only if it would take them significantly longer to rake in a large profit. It would certainly be a softer introduction to pillaging for new subscribers/doub officers, who may be deterred if PvPed on their maiden crewed pillage.

The difficulty with this is ensuring such zones are not heavily abused by merchants, therefore I propose these routes are not actually from island-to-island, but in a similar manner to CI/Lagtis, they would be from an island to a new destination point, but unlike the above, such points would be permanent, and charts would be purchaseable from shipyards.

Here's some outline:

1 permanent "safe pillage" route per archipelago.

Ships must use pillage setting to be able to use the route.

Route leaves from archipelago capital, terminates 5+ leagues out.

End of route has a marketless unforageable mooring, which allows the ship to port and divvy and be left there, but not to buy and sell goods. This mooring would be ferry-linked to the archipelago capital to prevent people being "marooned" away from their pillage vessels.

No high-value commodities or Kraken's Blood would be carried by the brigand/merchants using these routes.

Payouts would be capped significantly lower than on normal sea routes.

Routes could still be "graded" - e.g. A safe pillage route in Ruby could still have harder spawns than, say, in Pearl, with associated higher relative payouts.

That's it in a nutshell. A safe pillage area, no PvP, limited rewards but with all the regular pillage gameplay.
----------------------------------------
Whitewyvern. Distinctly Limey. Retired, No regrets. Unretired, still No regrets.Available in Cerulean and Obsidian flavours.

Forethoughts: ->Sometimes a relatively quick trip with good payouts would be nice.(Also hard to get bored with one puzzles in a short time)-> Likewise, a specific goal is a nice change of pace.-> PvP could use some attention too.

Suggestion:

Every so often (random timing, not too often, maybe once or twice a day) a brigand king/queen sets a small force of ships asail from island A-islandB (Where B is a considerable distance from A.) When this happens, either the ocean gets an automated broadcast, or if thats too spammy, the old salts will mention the convoy at random if you buy them a drink. In either case, the players get the message along the lines of "Insert BK name here is moving a load o booty from last island the ships passed to IslandB. Tis rumored to be stored on insert ship type(s) here.

These ships would have 4 characteristics:A) They would be manned by tough opponents. B) They have a flat payout, based on ship size. What I mean is that a sloop would always pay out Xk, and a GF would always pay out Yk. Where those amounts are a substantial prize considering the ship types. In other words, you can attack solo and still get Xk, if your skilled enough to fight solo against tough opponents. C) The ships arn't too interested in grappling while they are at a damage disadvantage, they would rather shoot at ye. Ye could even have the fights sinking and the poe is TH'd up.D) The poe comes in chests, which go to the booty until port. No auto-divy. This part is mostly thinking of PvP, I admit it.

If you wanted some variety within this activity, the different BKs could have differing difficulty and payouts per ship. Or differnt ship types based on BK.

So basically, its still the pillaging mechanic, but it presents the opportunity for a quick trip with a specific goal, and a hefty prize if your successful without too many people. Heck, make it sinking for the added risk if thats what the players want.

EDIT: If different BKs used different ship types, you could open it up to all player ship types as well. From sloops attacking the forces of Finius, to players taking their longship against the skullsplitter, to massive GF battles against the undead forces of Barnabas.
----------------------------------------
JJI of Malachite.
----------------------------------------
[Edit 4 times,
last edit by selgnij at Jan 31, 2009 9:57:00 AM]

I really like the idea of the looting being done through a TH or Forage like puzzle. The idea of missions is also good, but they would have to be quite varied for the extra interest to last more than a few weeks.
----------------------------------------Bobjanova on Viridian and MalachiteShops and stalls with fair and profitable wages for all: Jubilee, Napi, ChelydraStripped/Barely Dressed (Malachite)Phantasm/Reign of Chaos (Viridian)

I would like to see some treasure haul fun incorporated into a pillage setting. Maybe TH could be an option in a new "sinking pilly" with higher danger and better pay ^_~ maybe bot ships attack you in groups? In this case you can choose to max/fray or sink/TH this could be one of the voyage settings so as not to mess up bnav stats.

In battle I think it would be nice to see a damage indicator on opponent's vessels. I understand that remembering how many shots to max various ships is part of learning how to lead a good pilly. But with the inclusion of all the new ships I have trouble remembering how many shots it takes. With scoring of bnav based heavily on maxing properly and indicator would be straight forward and helpful to loads of new officers.

Dnav: I know OOO has tried to make Dnav more relevant and helpful to pillies but if you are playing dnav and then engage battle you have to start from zero again after battle. If Dnav could remember you longer so getting back on after battle it would remember your sparkly more people would enjoy bnav/dnav. It wouldn't be as much of an issue but like sails you need a few leagues to get up to speed.
----------------------------------------
Crabcake on Emerald and ObsidianCurrent avatar by Kolibri

If we are talking about pillage variety then new type of pillaging encounters are nice to have. What new can you think up using the system that is in place?

All that there is to is thinking up new types of challanges that would make it more fun, for both bnavver and puzzlers.

Pillage trophies like the Haloween ones would kick people back to pillaging, but only for a short time.

I think that rare (1 in 20 battles let's say) special encounters could be the thing.

- Atlantis patrols. See above.

- Mini cursed island. See above.

- Birigand ambush aka mini-flotilla.

Two or three ships of lower class. One flag-ship with BK on board. And some escort. You can sink them and TH after sinking. Or you can sink the escort and grapple BK for booty and trinkets.

- Capture the treasure chest.

You and bot start on the same part of a board, and on the other, there is a special sunken treasure, not only you have to haul it, you have to get there first. A board should have a hell lot of whirpool, reverse whirpools, winds and rocks.

- Cursed Cutter.

If you engage a cutter, orange or red. There is a chance that it will be a cursed cutter. Using the graphics from CI. But whole thing is mirrored. Left turns turn right, right left, and front move stops you in place. No move pushes you one move back. Whirpools go the other way around and winds sucks you to them. Now that's a test for adaptive bnavving. Something weird with puzzling might occur also.

- Something that would require a lot of manouvers. Like you would lose the ability to move with move tokens, just move like rafts in CI, double forward or turn in place. And manouvers would be very easily produced (2 in a turn in example).
----------------------------------------
Fair WindsBarbarosa of MalachiteMostly retired - burned out at the moment.
----------------------------------------
[Edit 1 times,
last edit by Giemz at Jan 31, 2009 2:44:49 PM]

make it more worthwhile to carry expensive goodies in the hold on pillages, more reason to actually fight a pvp if engaged, and also more reason to actually go out looking for PvP to begin with. I'd love to attack a ship with good players on board but right now there's no point as they'll run away if they have any booty worth taking.
----------------------------------------

rachaelj wrote:

"your standing in patronising has gone up and is now respected in your archipelago"

i think that the idea of finding a sea monster during a pillage would make it very interesting. for example youre on with a sloop and you find a scout triketos. you can either attack it or leave it. of course the boarding battle would include dragoons and such and the booty you get might include chests. or maybe find a sinister sloop/cutter at sea doing exactly the same but giving CI items.

or why not just add "pillage chests". during battles you might maybe get a chest just like in CIs or in atlantis. but of course it wouldnt have to include atlantean or CI items. but still get a valuable trinket or KB or gold or anything valuable and NOT belonging to CI or atlantis.

after all, this is a PIRATES game. pirates were on the seas pillaging, not attacking rare sea monsters or an isle filled with crazy cultists and zombies. and since they were released (have in mind im NOT against SMH and flots) why not mix them up with pillages?

or why not make a "sinking pillage". it would be an ordinary pillage but you have to sink the ship to haul everything it had. once you hauled everything up you can disengage. however you could sink but that means higher pays. or if you just want, you can just grapple the ship and get a smaller pay.
----------------------------------------
Hypnos says, "There was probably a big accident involving a cannon and some crates of fruit."Hypnos says, "You're trying to cover it up."Hypnos peers at Fehka

I want chests for winning every now and then. Not like a million chests. Maybe like 3 or 4 at the end of a 7-person sloop pillage. This would make pillaging more exciting, I think.

Also, something like sea monsters that show up every now and then, like a kraken who takes up 4 spaces. When you grapple it, it would fight as one opponent but fight rediculously well or something. Also, it would be more likely to pay out KB.Similar to the kraken, I'd like to see other monsters or ghoul ships.

Should be very easily coded, and would bring some fresh air to pillaging.
----------------------------------------
Fair WindsBarbarosa of MalachiteMostly retired - burned out at the moment.
----------------------------------------
[Edit 1 times,
last edit by Giemz at Jan 31, 2009 3:18:11 PM]

As much as people are bringing up the "grind" of playing the same puzzle for hours. Honestly you are also playing the same station for ages on SMHs too. Pillages just don't make enough money comparatively to attract high end jobbers anymore.

The real reason I SMH all the time instead is because of the random clothes from chests. I want to dress my pirate like she escaped from the circus!
----------------------------------------
Crabcake on Emerald and ObsidianCurrent avatar by Kolibri

I do really like the idea of finding Cursed Ships or Sea Monsters, and instead of grappling them, you'd have to sink them. I, however, don't like the idea of "sinking" pillages. I don't know about most oceans, but Cursed Isles has wreaked havok on the economy of Hunter. Sloops have already gone up 10k, and if you are sinking more ships, wood, iron, dubs, everything are going to keep creeping up, including CBS and Rum.

Instead of the ship sinking, I'd rather have you auto port when you "sink", like you do in a non sinking flotilla. You'd be at full damage, and probably full bilge. It would allow you to divy the booty if you want, or head back out.

Another thing that you could add, besides Cursed Ships and Sea Monsters (Which should be hidden, and randomly spawn when you engage, like a BK) is "Fleet" spawns. You could have Merchant Fleets, and Pirate Fleets. Merchant Fleets won't engage, and must be engaged separately, and Pirate Fleets might spawn. A Fleet would be like a small Flotilla. 2-4 ships, maybe more depending on their size and yours. It would be a "sinking" type battle, like the Sea Monster or Cursed ship, and would allow you to TH the ships like in a Float.

It might be kinda nice for an Elite crew on a Sloop to be able to have a Flot like experience.

One more thing that could break the grind, I find that the only puzzle most people have issues playing for a long time is Sailing. Maybe its time to implement a new type of sailing puzzle, and let pirates choose, with different ratings of course. They could choose which version they wanted to play from the same sailing station.